Darwin, Marx, Wagner. Critique of a Heritage.

Barzun, Jacques

doi:10.2307/2549555

Cited by 8 publications

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“…Our continuing disharmony with nature derives ultimately from this unedifying image, which Darwin clothed with the full dignity of a scientific theory. At the same time, the emphasis on competition between individuals and the implied superiority of the 'favoured races' in the 'struggle for life' were most easily taken to be justification --on the basis of natural law -for the economic exploitation of the masses as for the colonization and oppression of 'inferior' races [6] .…”

Section: The Full Title Of Darwin's Epoch-making Book Of 1859 Was Thmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural Being and Coherent Society

Ho¹

2017

Meaning of Life and the Universe

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Science is a system of concepts and tools for knowing and living with nature. As such, it should be integral to any human society from the most primitive prehistoric culture to the industrialized nations of today. But whereas the primitive lived within nature by her knowledge which is the totality of her personal and tribal experience, the civilized man is imprisoned outside nature, of which, therefore, he can have no real knowledge. Cartesian mind-matter dualism and Newtonian mechanics began a process of the dissolution of our natural being; which Darwin completed by reducing organisms (including humans) to objects, isolated from the environment, and buffeted by blind selective forces. This deep '.. . Freud believed in the person as a social atom requiring community only as a means to the satisfaction of his needs; in a primary hostility so strong that only sheer necessity or common hatred directed elsewhere could join people in love; in a certain biological inevitability of hereditary constitution, anatomy, and development, which strictly limits human possibilities; in an inner private existence which, although in part the result of early personal relationships, seems in later life, to make only indirect contact with external reality. .. and finally in civilization as the result of thwarted libinous impulses which have been deflected to symbolic ends.. . .' [8]

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Section: The Full Title Of Darwin's Epoch-making Book Of 1859 Was Thmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural Being and Coherent Society

Ho¹

2017

Meaning of Life and the Universe

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“…Darwin's theory of natural selection encapsulates the ideology of Victorian English society, the belief that progress is to be achieved on the one hand, through 'man's' domination and exploitation of nature by means of science and technology, and on the other, through competition in a capitalist free market whose frontiers are to extend as far as the horizons of conquests of the imperial armed forces. It was not an accident The emphasis on competition between individuals and the implied superiority of the 'favored races' in the 'struggle for life' were most easily taken to be justificationon the basis of natural law-for the economic exploitation of the masses as for the colonization, oppression and persecution of 'inferior' races (Barzun, 1958;Ho, 1988a).…”

Section: Evolutionary Theory and Human Destinymentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolutionary theory and World Future

1993

World Futures

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Evolutionary theory is intimately tied up with the destiny of human society. As the Darwinian era is drawing to a close with advances in the new molecular genetics as well as in our understanding of the dynamics and biophysics of living organization, evolutionary biologists are presented with deep challenges as to how their theory will relate to the world future and the new world order. Two main aspects that have the greatest implications are: dynamic order in nature and the integration of nature and culture.Traditionally, natural order has been construed in linear mechanical terms. By contrast, we now know that natural dynamical relationships are nonlinear and cyclical. The extent to which dynamic stability is based on feed-back interconnections between living system and environment, on complex space-time structure, on cooperativity and coherence are all important topics for future investigation.Whereas neo-Darwinists have tended to regard the biological being as given, and hence separate from the social entity, which is only a gloss on the biological, the new evolutionary theory recognizes and insists upon the continuity and inseparability between the two. The challenge to evolutionary biologists is the final desconstruction of the Darwinian man who has dominated the world for at least 150 years. In his stead, we should reinstate the natural social being motivated by love. In this way, we shall work towards a future 'coherent society' of natural beings living in harmony with nature's creative process where we shall nurture individual freedom and diversity with universal love.

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“…According to Barzun, "What brought [Darwin] rapid victory and prolonged sway over his age was ... the ability of the age to recognize itself in him" [34]. Much of the rea-son for the instant success of Darwin's theory is that it was cut from the very fabric of Victorian English society: mechanical materialism, positivism and free market economy.…”

Section: Biology and Socie'tymentioning

confidence: 99%

Reanimating Nature: The Integration of Science with Human Experience

Ho¹

1991

Leonardo

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. ABSTRACTThis article describes the emergence of a new science based upon the empirically and intuitively perceived unity of an evolving nature in which all conscious beings partake. The author suggests that knowing is at once an acknowledgment of nature's unity and, at the same time, an active participation in the creation and shaping of reality. A discussion of the ways in which these principles provide the possibility for the unification of human experience and creativity follows.its starting point the unity and intelligibility of a world that is partly of our own making. This orientation has major implications for human action and creativity, as I shall demonstrate. ALIENATION AND THE DEMISE OF THE ORGANISMMany great civilizations, both past and present, have regarded the unity of nature simply as a fact of immediate experience that needs no special understanding. The history of Western science, however, is remarkable for its major preoccupation with separating and reducing this unity into ever smaller and smaller fragments. Alongside of that is our own progressive alienation from nature and from ourselves as natural beings, which really began the moment the human mind set itself apart as observer on a nature observed. From that vantage point, the drama of nature mysteriously unfolds, and we become unwitting sufferers of unknown fate.In the same way that the physical world was reduced to mechanisms and atoms, so within the biological world Darwin's theory reduced organisms to objects acted on by blind selective forces in a hostile environment, and Mendelian

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Darwin, Marx, Wagner. Critique of a Heritage.

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Natural Being and Coherent Society

Natural Being and Coherent Society

Evolutionary theory and World Future

Reanimating Nature: The Integration of Science with Human Experience

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